Kodak UltraMax400

Since Fuji Superia400X has been discontinued 😦 I’m trying out a couple different ISO400 C-41 film stocks. The political economy of film photography is… well… weird RN… and film pricing is responding to inflation, fashion, private equity capital flows and the market distortions caused by Kodaks 2012 bankruptcy that are still rattling around the global economy. I don’t really obsess about which color film I use. My target is an under $10/36exposure roll of ISO400 C-41 process film for everyday work. When I find one that works for me I buy a brick, stash it in the freezer and use it till it’s gone.

One thing I liked about Superia was it did this when you overexposed it 1 stop… You got increased saturation, contrast and a bump in shadow detail without blowing out highlights. It also shifted a bit warmer without getting weird.:

So I bought some current production film and shot some test rolls: Kodak UltraMax400, the new Fuji400, and Wolfen NC400, to see how they respond to the light. I bracketed 3 exposures of each scene: box speed , 1 stop under, and 1 stop over. Developed normally – not pushed or pulled – we get normal, under, and over exposed images.

For consistency I used the same camera and lens (Nikon F6 w/Nikkor 28-105 f/3.5-5.6), and the cameras internal matrix metering mode with no filters or fill flash. All 3 rolls were processed and scanned by Indie Photo here in Philly.

The light in many of these shots pushes at the limit of the films dynamic range that could be controlled through lots of traditional techniques, but the whole point of this experiment was to test those limits. Here’s the results for Kodak UltraMax400:

My biggest takeaway is that this film stock is consistent with other Kodak consumer films I’ve used. It’s a bit ‘hard’ and not quite as forgiving as the old Fuji SuperiaX or Kodak Portra. Over exposed we do get increased saturation but with less latitude, more contrast, and the highlights tend to blow out. Looking at the sunset we got a dramatic color shift that wasn’t correctable. It also doesn’t like being underexposed, we get a magenta shift in the shadows. Nothing that can’t be handled with more careful and intentional exposures (or some tweaking in Lightroom). It has its strengths – and its weaknesses are all manageable, but I won’t be shooting this emulsion at ISO200 on a routine basis.